Psychology of Technology

by V.K. Kool, Rita Agrawal

Overview

This unique treatise expands on the philosophy of technology to argue for a psychology of technology based on the complex relationships between psychology, biology and technology, especially in the light of our relationships with our digital devices, our online lives, and our human experience. Drawing from disciplines ranging from philosophy and evolution to cognition and neuroscience, it examines myriad aspects of the brain’s creative development: the cognitive, sensory, and motor processes that enable technological progress and its resulting efficiencies and deficiencies along with our discomforts and pleasures. These experiences are key to behavioral and affective processes in technology, manifest in such diverse phenomena as multitasking, the shift in tech design from ergonomics to hedonomics, and the many types of online problem behaviors. Through these rich pages, readers can understand more deeply the history and future of human adjustment and adaptation in an environment intertwined with technology—and, with the ascendance of video games and virtual reality, new conceptions of the human self.

Among the topics covered:

• Could we have remained a tech-devoid society?

• Technology, ergonomics and the non-executive functions of our body.

• New directions in brain-computer interface.

• From avatars and agents to virtual reality technology.

• On measuring affective responses to objects.

• Psychology, technology, ethics, and culture.

A timely lens on a field that will grow in importance as it shapes our existence, Psychology of Technology will be read and discussed by not only psychologists, social scientists, and behavioral scientists, but also by technology designers and developers and those in biotechnology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319453323
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	12/25/2016
Edition description:	1st ed. 2016
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rita Agrawal, Ph.D. currently works as Director at the Harish Chandra PG College in Varanasi, India.

V. K. Kool, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, Utica.

Table of Contents

The emerging nature of psychology of technology.- Technology, psychology and evolution.- Technology and sensory, perceptual and cognitive processes.- Technology and motor behavior: the Cinderella of modern psychology.- Behavior in the virtual environment.- Technology and Hedonism.- Psychology of Technology in the 21st Century.